Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant Power Supply Portfolio

The Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant provides electricity to approximately 10,000 customers in the town of Hingham. HMLP is a member of New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) and ISO-NE (Independent System Operator – New England), so it can provide power more reliably since it is connected to the power grid and not buying power from a single supplier.

The customer load in Hingham is supplied by entering into long-term and short-term contracts for capacity and energy. These contracts include generators from some companies and system power from others. These various contracts will differ in their duration depending on need, the price and the terms of the agreement. When the market price for energy falls below the price of HMLP contracts, HMLP buys a portion of its energy from the market. Other times that HMLP may buy from the market are when generator outages occur and when HMLP needs additional supply to meet increased load. HMLP currently has 9 long term contracts for capacity and energy for a total of 51 Megawatts during October - May and 46 Megawatts during June-September.

HMLP continually manages its mix of power supply contracts (its portfolio) to make sure it has diversity in fuels, generator types and suppliers. It also continually monitors costs and contingencies to mitigate risk and ensure price stability for Hingham customers. Because HMLP is sensitive to environmental issues, it has more than 1 Megawatt of economical energy under contract from a Landfill Gas Recovery Facility in Randolph. This alternatively fueled facility has been awarded Renewables Credits by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. HMLP also contracts for hydro power,3.1 MW, from New York as part of its alternative energy portfolio.

Current Power Supply Portfolio of the Hingham Municipal Lighting Plant

Nuclear Power   Seabrook 5.8 MW Millstone Point 3 1.2 MW   7.0 MW     Hydro   NYPA (PASNY, New York Power Authority) 1.6 MW HQICC 1.5 MW   3.1 MW     Landfill Gas Recovery   Randolph GRS 1.2 MW   1.2 MW     Gas / Oil   Cleary 9 CC (Taunton) 3.0 MW Potter 2 CC (Braintree) 2.1 MW Stony Brook CC 14.1 MW Stony Brook PK 9.2 MW Watson (Braintree) 11.6 MW   40.0 MW     System Power   WPS 10.0 MW   10.0 MW